What are the three biggest things you look for when considering a new venue?
Location is one, to make sure that it’s accessible for travelling fans to get to: is there car parking and facilities near by? Number two, which is something which I used to never consider back in the day is the look of the venue, the vibe of the venue. British wrestling was synonymous for years with shows taking place in working men’s clubs or venues that looked like your nan’s living room. The look of a venue’s very important and is now one of the key things that makes British wrestling stand out from American (independent) wrestling. If you look at the key British promotions they take place in nice-looking venues, but when you look at some of the American independents it’s taken them a while to catch up with that. Take a look at Ring of Honor and the big step up they made from the Murphy Rec Centre when they first started, even just when they started draping that was a step up in terms of professionalism.
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly is that the ring fits inside the venue! There have been a number of times throughout the years when people have run shows without checking that. It’s not just the measurements inside the hall but also access routes into the hall as well. For example the poles on our 18-foot rings break down, but our 16-foot rings have 16-foot poles, so if there’s not 16 feet of clearance you can’t get the ring in. We did a ring job recently for somebody recently in a nightclub where the ring wouldn’t fit on the dance floor so they had to cancel the show because they didn’t have a contingency plan and they hadn’t checked if it would work.
What do promoters overlook when considering a new venue?
Looking at what other wrestling is around. There’s a lot of venues or areas that get oversaturated and then a lot of areas that don’t get a lot of wrestling. One thing people often do is look at a town that has a lot of wrestling and decide that’s where to put their wrestling product. Perhaps the smart move might be to look at areas that don’t have wrestling and they can be the first to bring a new product and pick up new fans. Wrestling fans only have a certain amount of money and they can’t be expected to spend their life savings on professional wrestling. They only have a certain amount of time as well.
What can you do to make yourself attracting to management at a potential new venue?
The main thing is to have your paperwork straight. A lot of people don’t even think about that. Have your public liability insurance, your employer’s liability insurance, your risk assessments and your method statements. Have those in place so that when the venue asks for them you can produce them straight away rather than have to say “Oh, I’ll get back to you on that one.” I’m sure some promoters just try to fob the venue off over and over and hope they forget about all that paperwork. But to me the best way to make a good first impression is to have an answer for any question that they have.
A lot of venue managers are very unfamiliar with professional wrestling: I find myself time and time again when we go into a venue having to explain exactly it is we do, so being able to verbalise that is very important. And again, being able to provide all the documentation that they may or may not ask for. If they say “Have you got risk assessments?” I always find it best to be able to produce the documents as well as provide an overview of your wrestling show with footage or pictures just to give this air of confidence that you have done this before and it will be successful and that you are professionals and know what you’re doing.
Is there a conflict between choosing a venue that’s great for the live experience and one that works well for DVDs and video on demand?
It’s always a conflict. I’m all about being artistic and creative with what I do but I think there is a possibility to get a happy medium. For example, one of the venues I run monthly is the London Cockpit. For me, although it’s not a huge venue that always seats 200 people, we’ve sold it out almost every time. You could argue we could be running those shows in a bigger venue with more regularity but it’s just got a great atmosphere: wherever you sit you’re on top of the action, it’s in the round so you’re on all four sides. And even though it’s a small venue, it’s a theatre so you’ve got the theatre lights, you’ve got a great sound system, the walls are blacked out, so it’s got a good vibe to it. You could have the grandest venue of them all, but if you ran say the O2 and only had 100 people in, it wouldn’t be very aesthetically pleasing. It’s constantly getting that balance right.
When you run multiple venues, are you more concerned with having them look the same on screen to create a consistent look, or would you rather highlight their individuality?
I like the fact that each venue has a different look. I feel that’s one of the things about growing as a promotion: you have to show that you can succeed in different areas and that you run shows in more than one venue. Each venue has a charm to it and being able to tap into that is important. Our uniform things that make sure people know it’s a Rev Pro show are all down to the branding — for all intents and purposes the entrance way is always the same. I always try to look at lessons from wrestling around the world and if you look at TNA where they ran the Impact Zone week-in, week-out, it’s a great looking venue but running that same venue made them feel a lot smaller time than they perhaps were at some times. It makes it feel a bit stale and I feel it’s nice to have fresh-looking venues and different backdrops just to keep the product exciting.
What are some of the steps you’ve taken to improve the fan experience?
The venue’s requirements for security: are we providing our own security or are they providing their own security team? If so, do they know they need to take the kid glove approach which we always try to push? We’re not responsible for the venue’s security team but we try to do the best we can to make sure we educate them as to the type of fans we have, which on the whole are lovely people. Wrestling gets shoehorned in with boxing and MMA audiences as one category and that can be unfair on wrestling fans. It’s important the security staff understand this so they don’t feel as threatened: the likelihood of anything kicking off is a lot lower than in a local boxing show where two rival fighters have each brought a coachload of fans and that’s why there can be problem.
Very famously with York Hall there was a rule where you weren’t able to take your drinks out of the bar area: if you were drinking you’d have to remain in that penned off area before you could return to your seat. I was able to get with the venue licensing team and make the argument that wrestling and boxing are categorised and licensed the same, but they are very different. We were able to trial people taking drinks to their seats and that’s been allowed ever since.
At Walthamstow there was only one bar that wasn’t very well stocked and only had one card machine. The bar take all goes to the venue, so there was no monetary reason for us to raise this other than to make the show a more pleasurable experience, but we actively approached the venue and said “you need to open a second bar, get in more card machines.” Also for obvious health and safety reasons glass bottles aren’t allowed on the arena floor, so they were having to pour everybody’s drinks from glass bottles into plastic glasses. We were able to say “You know what to expect now, you know it’s going to be busy, so get plastic drinks bottles in.”
We’re constantly looking at the fans’ journey through the venue and if something is flagged up that’s unsatisfactory, we’re the first to go to the venue and work with them to make it a more pleasurable experience. A lot of times we find that in doing that, the venues become more receptive to us as well because they know we care about what they’re doing on their side of the coin.
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made with venues and then learned a lesson from it?
Never assume. Often you take stuff for granted. For example, the first York Hall show we did, they gave us a seating plan and said it was very important that the seats stuck to these numbers.They gave us a seating plan for the balcony where the seats were individually numbered. I just took the venue’s word for it rather than going to check each of the seats were there. It turned out on the day that some of the seats on the seating plan didn’t actually exist for one reason or another. Then also on that show we assumed the venue would provide the numbered stickers on the seats, which they didn’t do. There’s no question which is too stupid to ask them and it’s best you ask the questions early rather than get there on the day to find out you’re completely misguided and wrong.
Imagine for a moment that York Hall’s management told you they were going to knock down the venue and rebuild it from scratch, and they asked you what they could change to make it your perfect venue. What would you suggest?
I actually love York Hall, so that’s a hard one! But for me the perfect venue has great acoustics: for example we did the Strong Style Evolved UK shows and the two venues were both owned by Planet Ice Arenas. They were trying to manage my expectations with Altrincham, saying it was like Milton Keynes but an older venue where the facilities weren’t as good. But when I got there, I actually preferred Altrincham because for wrestling it was a better set-up. The space on the floor was smaller but the [banked seating] went higher so we had a bigger capacity in a smaller space, and the roof was arched so it gives you great acoustics. York Hall has that and it’s very important: it contains all the sound into one area and creates an electric atmosphere, so I’d keep that aspect.
As for changes, I’d have better disabled access: there’s a disabled lift but it often doesn’t work. It is good to have separate entrances for people with disabilities because it can be an embarrassment for them to have to go past the entire queue to go in the main entrance. Other things would be more comfy chairs. With York Hall specifically, it would be great if they had their own in-house lights and PA system. That’s one of the benefits of doing theatre shows, while the downside there is not being able to do the show in the round. Wrestling’s a four-sided stage and having the ring on the theatre stage and have the wrestling play out to one side essentially [isn’t as good.] But having the first-class lighting already there for you helps: anything the venue can provide for you is a big, big plus, a huge benefit. Along with that, it helps to have the technicians who come along with the building who know exactly how their specific equipment works.
I’d also improve the bar system: I’m a big fan of having bars stashed around the place rather than in one area, just because that creates big, manic queues. And if they could become a bigger capacity, that would be very nice and solve another problem we have which is making the leap up to the next venue. The leap from 300 up to 1,200 seats has quite a big cost, but is still kind of affordable. When you’re looking at moving up from 1,200 upwards you’re looking at 5,000 and 10,000 seat venues, so being able to grow more gradually to a slightly bigger capacity would be lovely — for the same price of course!
